I've lived in Germany and the UK, I guess I wrongly assumed it was like this everywhere in Europe. Might also be related to the social environment.

I am noticing, the social circle I am currently in has now largely moved to Telegram, whereas in other places it's 100% WhatsApp.

Telegram itself seems like one big honeypot, if people are moving from WhatsApp to Telegram that’s quite a retrograde step.

Telegram is not end to end encrypted. The service provider can read the messages.